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Dodge WC63
The Dodge WC63 was a type of truck manufactured on Earth by the American Dodge Company during the mid-20th century for that nation's US military. They were powered by an internal combustion engine. In an alternate 1944 caused by the Temporal Cold War, the Na'kuhl leader Vosk used a by the German SS operated Dodge WC63 truck, carrying the license plate "NA 43212", to transport the captured Ensign Travis Mayweather and Commander Charles Tucker III of to a meeting with Jonathan Archer in a wooded area outside New York City. Vosk erroneously believed that he could exchange his prisoners in return for help in getting his people home to their own timeline. ( ) Background information The entire prisoner exchange scene was filmed on Monday in Griffith Park, along with the other forest scenes featured in the previous part, . http://www.dailytrek.de/?p=3333 In total 43,000 units were produced of this 1.5 ton load carrying, six-wheel drive light truck between 1943 and 1945, together with its immediate predecessor, the WC62, which only lacked the winch on the front. Phased out in the 1960s, very few were ever converted for civilian use, but many ended up in museums or private collections, including the rented one featured in the Star Trek episode. Germans using American-made trucks is not as far-fetched as it may seem at first glance; during World War II, the German military made extensive use of captured enemy vehicles of all kinds (trucks being especially coveted, as they had always been in relatively short supply to the German military), having even invented a term for them, "Beutefahrzeuge", which translated as "booty vehicles", and fitting them into their ordnance designation system. The in the episode featured truck would have administratively been known to the Germans as a "LLkw 1,5t WC63(a)" or "Leichte Lastkraftwagen (= light truck) 1.5 ton WC63 (amerikanisch)". The truck's license plate seen in the episode is nonsensical though, it should have read "WH-43212" or "SS-43212", depending on what organization it was assigned to, the Wehrmacht or the SS respectively. A movie-converted WC62/63 truck had likely made an earlier Star Trek appearance already, albeit a very fleeting and ephemeral one; in the second season episode of , James T. Kirk and Spock were watching a propaganda newsreel on the planet Ekos, in which Ekosian Wehrmacht vehicles were shown. One clipping was not from an actual, historical newsreel, but rather from an as of yet unidentified American (propaganda) war movie, of which many were produced in the period 1941-1945. Showcasing a movie-made six-wheel drive truck in the background (the possibly converted Dodge WC62/63 and arguably posing as a the historic German " ") as well as a fantasy troop transport in the foreground – obviously a converted period truck and conceivably an attempt by the art department of the unidentified production to emulate one of the very distinctive German " - " half-track vehicles – , the exact same two fantasy vehicles were also featured in the contemporary 1943 war movie, . While very likely, as Dodge was in the early war years the only manufacturer of six-wheel drive light trucks for the US military (they only too happy to lend their support to the Hollywood war effort), a firm identification remains unfeasible due to the movie conversion. A lighter sibling of the Dodge WC63, had been the half-ton load carrying Dodge WC4 munitions carrier, seen in "Storm Front". External links * *Dodge WC63 at IMCDb.org Category:Earth vehicles